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“Rebreathers, we have an gas attack underway.”
Superman gives the command, barking it over the coms, the only one of the Justice League bold enough to give Batman’s children orders and expect them to obey.
An expectation that is immediately rewarded, both Tim and Damian strapping on their masks, barely faltering in their individual fights.
Not a moment too soon, as the familiar hiss of gas floods through the vents of the compound, a yellow cloud diffusing into the air, sinking to the ground. It’s too thin to disrupt their vision, but thick enough that when Damian whirls around, cape flaring, the gas parts with the air currents, swirling across the room in artistic patterns.
Tim, engaged in his own battle with a few mind-controlled victims, inches closer to the younger Robin.
They have two hours of filtered air in their rebreathers. Tim anticipates the fight being over sometime in the next thirty minutes, but it’s already dragging on longer than he thought it would. The Justice League called all hands on deck for this mission, freeing civilians from a lab that specializes in neurochemistry, developing targeted serums that increased suggestibility without affecting motor function. A mind control formula. Pretty routine, in Tim’s opinion, but a testy situation to be in with half of the Justice League’s forces off fighting with the Lantern Corps against yet another alien invasion.
Superman, the only remaining founding member now that both Batman and Wonder Woman are off-planet, called in as many operatives as he could spare to complete this mission with as few casualties as possible.
Dick wanted to come, of course, but he and Barbara are working a case with Harley, and they can’t exactly leave her unsupervised. Duke is off with the Outsiders, and neither Cass nor Steph was willing to work with the JL after the last incident, leaving Tim and Damian the only members of the Batfamily free to answer the summons.
So. Here they are, carefully incapacitating a bunch of zombie-esque civilians while the ranking members of the Justice League hunt through the compound to find and arrest the lead technicians.
Honestly, Tim’s had better Tuesdays.
Across the room, Kon— and how did he get dragged into this?— hits a large man a little too hard, and Tim winces at the sound of cracking ribs as he goes down.
“Injuries to a minimum,” He calls, swinging his staff low to hit the legs of an elderly woman, catching her before she can hit the ground.
Beside him, Damian scoffs, but the ten-year-old is surprisingly gentle in his own handling of the victims, hardly maiming anyone at all.
“Course, RR,” Kon flashes him a dazzling grin, ducking past a clumsy punch. Mind control hasn’t necessarily increased any level of skill in the victims, Tim notes. For a moment, he’s distracted, watching Kon show off, the older teenager batting them away like flies.
Then something large and projectile shoots past him, and Tim realizes that somewhere along the way some of the victims have found guns .
Well. Tim has certainly had better Tuesdays.
“What fool thought to arm these witless—” Damian snarls, ducking underneath another bullet, this one going just as wide as all the rest.
“Don’t insult the victims,” Tim says breathlessly, darting away from his tight circle of defense with Damian to disarm a middle-aged soccer mom with a Glock. “Focus on getting the weapons away.”
“Who died and made you team leader?” Damian grouses, snagging a handgun as he vaults closer to Tim, pressing his back to the older boy’s, reforming their circle.
Standard formation for Bats, especially ones of similar height. Unfortunately, that’s when shit really starts to hit the fan.
The gas, a threat Tim dismissed after concluding that it wasn’t flammable, grows thicker with every passing second, seeping from the vents without stopping, and a few of the civilians are reacting to it.
The glazed eyes fade, clumsy uncoordinated movements stilling as they seem to come out of a trance, or maybe just spiral into a deeper one. One woman collapses to her knees, hands over her ears, and starts screaming.
Which makes it look a hell of a lot like Fear.
Tim’s hand flies to his comm, pressing down on the button that will broadcast his voice across the channels. “Red Robin to Superman. What’s in the gas?”
“Superman to Red Robin.” Clark sounds stressed. That’s not good. “We’re unsure. Flash was compromised, but his metabolism has eaten through it.”
Damian pushes Tim hard, kicking away a man who’d come too close. Kon is getting swamped, the press of people never ending as they just keep getting back up
“Symptoms?” Tim demands, a pit sinking in his stomach. Some of the men and women have started talking to themselves. Voices that clamor over each other, shrieking paranoia as they attack anything and anyone close to them.
The mundane, if tedious, job of subduing a bunch of non-combatants has suddenly grown a lot more harrowing.
“Chills,” Flash chimes in. “Heightened adrenaline. Auditory hallucinations. Got pretty trippy for a minute there.”
“Anxiety? What about paranoia?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Fear toxin,” Damian grumbles, pausing to sigh explosively, practically tucked under Tim’s elbow. It’s a good place to take a rest, because it means Tim can knock out the man to his left before he can make a grab for Robin.
As if on cue, the screaming starts.
They aren’t just attacking the heroes now. Tim watches in horror as the guns are turned in on each other, firing randomly, as the smell of blood and sweat mixes with the sterile lab chemicals and the sulfuric tinge of Fear in the air.
Even the unarmed civilians are doing a lot more damage, clawing at faces, wrestling themselves to the ground and practically strangling the life out of each other.
“How much antidote do you have on you?” Tim demands, watching the carnage unfold. Fear gas is as potent as its antidote, and, on principle, every Bat has at least ten doses on their belt for this exact reason.
Damian falters, bumping into Tim, pushed back by a particularly hysterical young man. For a moment, he raises his sword, before lowering it again and taking care of the problem with his bare hands.
Tim doesn’t really think it’s his place, but he feels a small swell of pride for him anyway.
Robin reaches into one of the many pockets on his belt, pulling out a row of twenty capsules of antidote.
“I’ve got a plan. Superboy!”
The teenager, still with that stupid grin on his face, levitates into the air, floating above a mob of terrified people all trying to kill him, and salutes Tim. “All ears cap’n.”
“Board up the vents for me,” Tim says. Fear gas reaction isn’t affected by the magnitude of the dosage, exactly, but re-exposure lessens the effectiveness of the antidote. “Damian, I’ll hold them down, you start shoving these down their throats.”
“This is medical malpractice,” Damian grumbles, but starts opening the pills anyway.
They dissolve quickly, absorbed into the bloodstream by way of the mouth and throat. Fast acting, of course, or they’d be useless in the field. Far less effective than the intramuscular antidote, but Tim has never met anyone willing or able to stick themselves while on Fear.
Tim grabs the first victim by the throat, kicking out their legs and wresting them to the ground for just long enough for Damian to pinch their jaw open and shove the pill into their mouth. Tim holds their head in place, glove clamped over their mouth, for ten seconds and then lets go.
And so it goes.
Kon focuses on disarming the more violent ones, twisting guns into interesting shapes with his strength, knocking out anyone who can’t be calmed.
It’s going fine. Great, actually. Tim and Damian settle into a rhythm, with only the slightest complaining from the latter. Those who’ve gotten the antidote settle a little, some succumbing to unconsciousness immediately, others weakly thrashing on the ground. Whatever mind control serum was affecting them was either counteracted by the Fear or the antidote. The chaos dies a little, and Tim tentatively allows himself a mental pat on the back.
“Five left,” Damian warns, peeling away the aluminum and plastic covering.
Tim surveys their quickly dwindling crowd. There’s at least a dozen more, though Kon is taking care of that by knocking some of them out. “Keep going,”
By the time Tim and Damian finish administering the last five pills, Kon has dispatched the rest of the civilians, firmly sending them on to the road to dreamland. And a killer headache when they wake up.
Before Tim can radio in, Kon is taking the honors. “This is team Super-Robins reporting! We’ve cleared the ground floor.”
“Good work,” Superman says, instead of addressing the unofficial and unprofessional nickname. “We’ve rounded up the last few here. Can you three take the Green Arrow back to the jet for medical?”
“Location?” Tim says distractedly, spotting a dull metallic shine among the crumpled bodies of the civilians. He covers his mic, sending a quizzical look to Kon. “Did you take all the weapons?”
“I thought I did.”
Tim rolls his eyes, sauntering across the room and bending to grab the gun. They really don’t need any confused people waking up with weapons in their hands.
Only the gun is lodged firmly in the hand of a man, and when Tim reaches for it, it flies up to slam against his jaw.
His mask-covered jaw. Tim rears back, fiery hot pain searing through his face as the plastic of his rebreather cracks, shards jutting against the thin skin of his cheeks and cutting. Immediately, blood wells up, dripping down his face.
More importantly, though, the seal of his rebreather is loosened, and the smell of sulfur grows much stronger.
Tim curses wildly. He can taste the Fear on his tongue, a familiar sour scent, and he knows immediately how screwed he is.
Tim grabs the gun and draws back, punching the man in the face one good time. He goes down without aplomb, leaving Tim feeling very, very stupid.
“RR?” Kon calls, probably smelling the blood.
“I’m compromised,” He says. Fear gas takes at least a full sixty seconds to kick in, meaning the goosebumps and his pounding heart is just a fun little placebo. A precursor to the real thing.
“What?” Damian snaps, arms crossed over his chest. He juts his hip out, practically glaring at Tim. “Seriously, Drake, how pathetic are you?”
Tim reaches up, taking carefully shallow breaths, and undoes the straps securing shards of heavy plastic to his face, pulling off his rebreather.
Damian, for all his bluster, falls silent, paling a little.
“Uh oh,” Kon says eloquently.
“Superboy,” Tim says, before the Fear can set in and screw with his perceptions. “You go and retrieve Green Lantern. Damian and I will head for the jet and establish communications with Gotham. I’ll have someone meet us at Watchtower.”
There won’t be any antidote in the emergency medical on the jet, and probably not on Watchtower either. Scarecrow is a Bat problem, confined to the slums of Gotham.
Kon nods firmly, clapping Damian on the shoulder. “Take care of him, squirt. See y’all in a bit.”
“This is just great,” Damian grumbles, marching up to Tim, batting the useless rebreather out of his hands and grabbing his wrist. “I knew you were a moron, Drake, I did not anticipate the full extent of your—”
“Could we not?” Tim sighs. He jumps slightly, as a hissing sound starts up in the back of his head, the whirr of electricity suddenly a lot louder.
It’s just Fear. Those whispers? The shadows creeping up the walls? Just Fear.
Damian just shakes his head wordlessly, and Tim resists the urge to jerk his brother back, to tuck him underneath his arm because something is coming.
It’s right behind them, following their footsteps, tracking them as they walk through the halls of the compound.
He breathes deeply, focuses on Damian’s fingers digging into his forearm, spindly and gloved, and tries to slow his heart rate. His limbs are weak with adrenaline now, knees shaking, muscles twitching with the urge to run.
But the physical symptoms are just the start. Soon, the paranoia and the hallucinations will set in, and his heart beat and blood pressure will rise, body flooding with stress hormones until he either goes into cardiac arrest, or shock.
Which. Which is definitely not something Tim should be thinking about right now.
“Breathe, Drake,” Damian demands. “Or are you too stupid to do that as well?”
“I’m fine,” Tim says. Not very convincingly, with the way his voice cracks. “Totally not dying, D.”
“As if I could be so fortunate.”
That startles a barked laugh from him, distracts him from the shivers, the twisting of his stomach. He closes his eyes, balling his hands up into fists so he doesn’t scratch at the feeling of bugs crawling under his skin.
Eventually, Damian has to grab his hand and drag him along. Tim’s trying not to make it too hard on his younger brother, but it takes all of his focus to ignore the delusions, to talk himself through the Fear and keep his breathing in check. He’s not arrogant enough to think he could counteract the effects of a powerful psychoactive drug with just mental fortitude, but his research has proven that mental coaching and meditation in the first thirty minutes of fear exposure greatly reduces symptoms of paranoia and hallucinations, and decreases the risk of heart failure for up to three hours, barring re-exposure.
“Richard will be fast,” Damian says, practically hauling Tim up the airstairs and into the cloaked jet. He herds Tim to the front of the jet, past the rows of seats and storage to the stores of emergency medicine. The lights are flickering, the shadows growing even though Tim knows they aren’t.
Damian straps a cardiac monitor to Tim’s wrist, forces him to sit down. He bites his lip, staring at his younger brother and trying to ignore the blood dripping down his face.
The kid is fine. Everything’s fine. It’s just the fear.
Still…
Tim latches on to Damian’s wrists, presses the bed of his thumb into the pulse point, feels for the rhythmic beating, steady and slow. The younger boy lets out a put upon sigh, eyes rolling skyward even as he succumbs to his brother’s fretting.
“Nothing you’re seeing is real, Drake,” He says, almost soothingly. “Control yourself. Master the fear.”
It’s something Bruce would say, dramatic and broody, and Tim can’t help but smile just a little.
“I’ll get right on that, Robin.”
They’re quiet for a moment. Damian performs a field check, and Tim allows him to because the kid needs the practice and he needs a minute to breathe. To brace himself before everything gets worse. Someone really should do a field check on Damian , but Tim can’t trust himself to.
“You need to get out some restraints,” Tim says, as lightly as he can. He rubs at his arms, swallowing thickly when someone screams his name.
There’s nothing and no one there, it’s just him and Damian. No matter how real it seems, no matter how vividly the shadows warp into faceless demons, he can’t freak out.
But he itches to run, to pull out one of the many bat-a-rangs on his belt and start hitting and kicking until he feels just a little safer.
Damian scowls, glaring at the space between them. “Is that necessary?”
“You know it is.”
He pushes himself to his feet, swaying hard when he stands, vertigo hitting him like a train. Instantly, Damian is plastered to his side, holding him up and directing him to the back of the plane, where they won’t be in the way of any heroes seeking medical attention.
It’s grounding, to have the pressure of Damian’s hand around his wrist, giving him a reality to focus on while the rest of his senses are bombarded with false stimulus.
Hallucinogens are the worst.
Damian pushes him into a chair, and Tim drags him down beside him.
“Drake.” It’s a warning, a firm reminder of where his boundaries are and what will happen if Tim dares to cross them. He’s keenly aware of how few people are even allowed to get this close to Damian.
He is not Dick Grayson, he doesn’t have the right.
But it’s a bit of a necessity. A burning need to put himself between the monsters and his baby brother.
For the first time in a while, Tim ignores the tense, uncomfortable line of Damian’s shoulders, forcing the younger boy into the window seat.
It irritates him enough to have Damian reaching for his ear, switching the comms to a more familiar line. Tim can hear his voice echoed in his own ear as he says, “Robin to Nightwing, come in.”
It’s the work of seconds for the line to crackle to life.
“This is Nightwing. Robin, go ahead.”
“RR has been compromised, we need Fear antidote delivered to the watchtower ASAP.”
Tim listens to the muffled sound of movement over the line, and he’s pretty sure the radio static is a figment of his imagination. It’s rare for interference to affect bat tech.
The, “You’re on your own, Robin,” Certainly isn’t real. Auditory hallucinations have set in, then.
Nightwing wouldn’t sound so calloused, almost derisive, a sneer audible in his voice. Tim tightens his grip on Damian’s arm, turning off his own comm.
Dick’s voice persists.
So pathetic. Needy. You were never good enough to be Robin. A piss-poor replacement, Bruce shouldn’t have—
Tim wrings his hands hard enough that the joints strain, feeling something hot and wet drip down his face.
Not real, it’s not… Dick wouldn’t say that, even if it sounds right.
“Timothy.” Damian tugs at one of his hands. “Timothy, relax.”
“Codenames,” He rasps. This is a league vehicle, it’s not secure, not by a bat’s standards. He stares as Damian rolls his eyes, as they roll into the back of his skull, coming back opaque, clouded with death. Lips blue and pale.
There’s a gaping slit in his throat, crusted with dried blood and viscera. He’s dead, he’s dying, more blood spilling from his mouth, chest eerily still, despite the echoing, wheezy sounds of breath that grate against Tim’s ears like so many nails on a chalkboard.
“You failed,” The corpse of his brother says, and Tim can only pant in terror, trying and failing to get his limbs to obey his commands as the world darkens and tunnels until Damian’s dead eyes are the only thing he can see.
He squeezes and something in his hand pops and grinds. It might just be the cracking of a knuckle, but the aching pain that immediately spikes afterward is damning.
A pale, lifeless hand grabs his own, the dead boy prying apart his fingers with a grip that’s surprisingly strong. Damian holds them in his own.
“I’m going to restrain you now,” He says, the words clearer, without the distorted hiss, and Tim is abruptly reminded of what a Fear hallucination looks like.
And what it doesn’t.
It’s hard to feel relieved, when the chemicals in his body, the images his eyes are communicating to his brain, are so convinced that what he’s seeing is real.
He tries not to fight it when Damian cuffs his wrists to the arm of his chair. It’s not enough, won’t stop him from trying to bash his own skull against the headrest once the Fear piques, but it’ll do for now.
“What are you seeing?” Damian murmurs, stripping him of his utility belt, divesting him of all his hidden razor blades with militant precision.
“You. Y—you’re dead.”
“I’m not dead,” He insists, taking off his glove. Tim watches as he presses his small fingers against Tim’s throat, eyes widening at the undeniable warmth. “Even your fears are ridiculous, Drake.”
Tim doesn’t point out that Fear gas isn’t supposed to be rational, that it says a lot about their relationship that Damian dying is one of the worst things he can imagine.
He doesn’t get a chance to say any of that, or anything really, because the door to the cabin slides open, and the rest of the Justice league files in.
Damian jerks away from him, all the way to his feet, but Tim latches on to his arm before he can go any further.
“Red Robin has been compromised,” Damian says, firm and assured, tilting his chin up even in the face of the muscular, powerful, nonhumans. Tim is suddenly starkly aware of how quickly they could flay his skin from his bones.
Superman stands at the front of the pack, eyes glowing red, face twisted in righteous fury. He towers over Damian like a god, advancing on the boy.
Tim fumbles, reaches for his utility belts with hands that can’t move, straining against the restriction of the chair.
“Don’t touch him!” He screams, at the man he might have considered a friend, were he in a better state of mind. “Don’t you dare.”
“Rob?” That’s Kon, pushing past the Leaguers to meet Tim’s eyes. Yet another Kryptonian, one he can’t fight without the kryptonite on his belt. A threat.
Damian, kind, sweet, loving, Damian, who is completely defenseless against these monsters, deftly avoids Tim’s flailing legs, stalking up to the Kryptonians with his arms crossed over his chest.
“What happened?” Superman booms, and Tim vibrates with the need to move, to yank Damian out of the way of that force of nature. To shove a kryptonite dagger up the asshole’s nose.
“I’ll kill you,” Tim snarls, back arching away from the chair, trying to articulate limbs that refuse to obey his commands.
Superman scoffs, extends a hand. He doesn’t even draw back, just swats Damian, with as much pressure as one would shoo away a mosquito, but the boy goes flying. His neck twists to the side before he even hits the wall of the cabin, a sickening snap that reverberates in Tim’s ears.
He screams, again and again, as the kryptonian advances on him now.
Damian’s dead. Dead, dead, dead. And he’s next.
Those crimson eyes turn on him, and Tim can feel the heat, sweat dripping down his spine and soaking his clothes. His skin is searing off of his bones, blistering and peeling, and it burns. It burns so bad. He’s dying and he doesn’t even know why.
The faces shift, the last vestiges of reality drifting away, and Tim slips into his own personal hell, full to the brim with real-life monsters.
The plane ride is miserable.
While Damian isn’t usually prone to such understatement, he can’t really find the words to summarize how utterly… taxing it is.
It’s rare to see his family exposed to Fear gas. Duke got dosed once, taken off guard at night, when he didn’t have his suit. Damian wasn’t even allowed in the cave until the next evening, when a few doses of the antidote had time to work through the symptoms, and the older boy was mostly lucid again.
He’s pretty sure Jason was gassed sometime recently, but Nightwing was near enough to stop it before the paranoia could cycle into delusion.
Damian’s never been exposed to Fear himself.
Watching Tim writhe, watching him scream until his lips crack and bleed, Damian finds he really doesn’t want to be.
He lodges himself under his brother’s arm, as best he can with the armrest in the way. Tim is calmer when Damian’s close, finds it easier to convince himself that the boy is, in fact, not dead. One of the teen’s fingers is dislocated, Damian’s sure of it, but he still digs them into the fabric of his cape, holding him in place.
The Justice League is staring.
Damian’s aware that he and his family come off as insular. Cultish. Less than half the ranking members of the justice league know their true identities, even fewer can profess a close interpersonal relationship to any of the Bats.
Tim’s stunt here, the vicious protectiveness, the way he snarls at anyone who comes too close, is not going to help their image.
Damian finds it hard to care, tensed in anticipation for the next round of hallucinations. He knows he’s going to have to wait it out, virtually useless until Richard comes around with the antitoxin, but every pained wheeze and terrified scream grates on his nerves in a way that’s purely physical.
His own anxiety is rising, breaths getting shorter, chest tight.
He doesn’t like it, doesn’t like the weight of the league’s stares, doesn’t like the way Flash grimaces and ducks his head, shifting uncomfortably. Canary’s pinched expression is too pointed, spasming every time Timothy groans.
There’s something like guilt in the lines of their wrinkles, and just a little deeper than that, is accusation.
“Robin?”
He looks up at Superman, who visited to watch his school play and taught him how to throw a man twice his size across the room. He’s close to Richard and Bruce, close to Damian by proxy.
Tim’s head jerks up when he speaks, but he’s tired himself out, now just watching passively. He slipped the cuffs twice already, and Damian has to keep strapping him in. It’s no easy task.
“We’re five minutes out,” Superman says. “Will you need help transporting him?”
“I highly doubt you’d be of any use,” Damian retorts, even though it’s abrasive and combative, two things Richard has been trying to train him out of.
He wouldn’t be any help, though, considering how loudly Tim screamed at the sight of him. Still, he softens the blow, watching Superman’s face fall into a guilty wince. “Nightwing is on standby. He’ll provide assistance if needed.”
“Day,” Tim rasps, and it’s too much. Too close to a leak, especially with all the ears listening in, tuned intently on their conversation.
But that’s all he says, just that one word, only partially directed at the younger boy. Damian doesn’t respond to it anyways, eyes narrowed on the clone-boy as he sidles just slightly closer.
Tim’s reaction to him was just as violent, though far more surprising. Kon-El, as far as any of the Batfamily knows, is Tim’s confidante. His right hand man. Just a little too close to be brothers. If anything, he expected Kon to be the anchor in the torrent of Tim’s hallucinations, not Damian.
Yet here he is, acting as a glorified teddy bear while Tim glares at the clone so hard he might just spontaneously develop laser vision.
It leaves him wondering why he’s the one Tim’s decided to latch onto. If it’s a result of being the closest non-hostile or an actual trust bond between them. Not that Damian’s given Tim much reason to trust him.
By the time the jet pulls into the hangar of the Watchtower, Damian is left tense and sore, shoulders hunched to his ears as he uncuffs his older brother.
The rest of the league don’t dare move, frozen stiff as they try to avoid triggering another episode.
Their inexperience with Fear is deplorable. Father should run them through a few more drills, maybe have them do some community service in Gotham for a few days to really drive home the lesson.
He has to help Timothy to his feet, resisting the urge to pull away when the older boy clings. He’s never been this close before, never had that edge of protectiveness bleed over into desperation and possessiveness, not from Tim.
But, if Damian were the one continuously hallucinating his brother’s demise, he might be a little on edge too.
So he allows himself to be manhandled with as much tolerance as possible, squished under his brother’s arm.
“Nightwing is here,” Damian says, grunting as he tries to goad Tim toward the air stairs. “He has the antidote.
Tim falters, pausing in his stride to bend down and pull a batarang from his boot, aimed for Green Arrow’s head. Damian jerks his arm to the side, and instead the blade flies toward the Flash, harmlessly caught between two of his fingers.
He thought he disarmed Timothy, but he should have been more thorough.
Richard is in the hangar, practically vibrating at the foot of the air stairs, to the point where Damian doesn’t even have to worry about finding a way to get Tim down, he just lets the teen stumble into their brother’s arms.
Dick catches him, of course, and despite the Fear pumping through his veins, Tim lets out a shuddery breath of relief.
It rankles that Damian couldn’t offer a similar sense of safety. That instead of being a protector, he was firmly something to protect.
“Aw, Babybird,” Dick coos, holding the teenager up with one hand and using the other to disrobe him, tugging down the tunic of his suit to get past the under armor. “It’s almost over.”
He’s quick about it, swabbing the exposed skin with deft movements, uncapping a syringe from his belt and lining the needle up with his bicep.
Tim goes stiff when he pierces skin, then limp all at once, and Dick pockets the syringe so he can use both hands to lever the boy into a princess carry.
Damian takes his rightful place at Richard’s side, dogging his footsteps as he sets a clipped pace to the med bay.
The league files off the jet behind them, but neither Bat pays them any mind. Dick ducks his head to speak to Damian, shifting his grip on Tim so the teen’s legs aren’t at risk of kicking him.
“You did a good job taking care of him.”
He doubts that. Even now Tim is whimpering, sweating bullets as the antidote valiantly tries to bring him back to an even keel. The heart monitor has been pinging since he put it on, his vitals spiking in dangerous ways.
His anxiety must be written on his face, because Dick glances from Tim to Damian and back, wincing slightly. “I know it’s scary to watch, but Tim will be fine, I swear.”
He stops for just long enough to nudge Damian’s shoulder, to bend down and press his lips against his hair, taking a moment to comfort the trembling boy as best he can with his arms occupied.
And then Damian is steeling himself, ending the moment before it can go any further.
“His index finger is broken,” He reports, clearing his throat. “We should probably see to that.”
Tim wakes up in far less clothes than he fell asleep in.
That’s probably the worst thing about getting injured enough to land him in Medbay. The incontinence pads he can feel crinkling beneath him, the stiff sheets that aren’t used enough to be anything but unpleasant. The evidence of someone changing him, sticking needles into his arm and treating him while he was sleeping.
It shouldn’t make him uncomfortable, but it does. He doesn’t like the idea of being at anyone’s mercy, not even his family’s.
Still, despite his reservations, Tim finds himself relaxing at the familiar sounds of rushing water and chittering bats.
He’s shaking from head to toe, a pretty typical side effect from Fear. Tremors can last up to two weeks after exposure, but for Tim they’ve always cleared up within the first five days. The chills persist for a little longer, and sometimes after a really bad dose, he swears he can feel bugs squirming around in his skin.
He opens his eyes slowly. The only way to combat the pervasive darkness of the cave is through fluorescents bright enough to outshine the sun, and the medbay has to have good lighting. Not the best thing to wake up to, especially when you’re as photosensitive as Tim is.
His hand is wrapped and heavy, a distant sort of pain twinging when he flexes his fingers. He has a vague memory of breaking one, but he’s too foggy to be sure.
Tim pushes aside the heavy blanket tethering him to the bed, shaking his head to get his hair out of his face. His breath comes out shaky, and he rubs his neck gingerly. He must be on something, some sort of pain medication, because he can taste copper in the back of his throat but it’s more of a deep ache than anything else, even though he knows he won’t have a voice for a while.
Fear sucks. Fear sucks so bad, and now he owes Cass a soda, because he bet it’d be Jason to be gassed next.
Jason’s always getting fear-gassed, though. The dude takes for granted that his helmet has a built-in mask and just doesn’t carry rebreathers, even though he throws around his helmet left and right. The whole family has taken to tailing him whenever Scarecrow’s on the loose just to keep him from going on a Fear-fueled rampage.
His whole body protests when he tries to sit up, every overused muscle loudly informing him of just how shitty of an idea that is, but Tim has never been good at listening to his body’s cues. And besides, he wants to see who got put on bedside duty.
He’s hoping for Steph. She always gets the good sick candy, and won’t tease him if he can’t beat her at mario kart because his hands are shaking too badly. Dick tends to take the job just a tad too seriously, and Jason is never assigned unless he chooses to be. And if he appointed himself to Tim’s bedside it just means he secretly wants to torment the teen for the next few days.
Bruce gets broody whenever anyone’s hurt, Duke treats people like they're fragile, and Cass… Well, actually, he can’t complain about Cass. She’s a pretty good nurse too.
So he’s hoping for either of them, or Alfred, who dotes and fusses. He’s not expecting Damian.
And yet there Damian is, conked out in the chair right next to his bedside, drooling a small puddle into the armrest.
It’s kind of cute, kind of unsettling. The angle of his head is awkward, and will probably be painful once he wakes up. There’s a teddy bear squished under his arms, the generic dollar store ones Bruce stocked up on when Dick was a kid. Apparently, the then-ten-year-old needed a new stuffed animal after every scraped knee, and Bruce bought them in bulk.
The tradition was strong by the time Jason became Robin, and even after he died Bruce found himself instinctively presenting one to Tim every time he had to patch the boy up. Both of them were embarrassed by that, but Tim still has a few in his room.
He doesn’t get them anymore, fortunately, but it seems that Damian has received one on his behalf.
As if sensing Tim’s eyes on him, Damian stirs, eyelids fluttering as he shifts his limbs into something that resembles a human pretzel a little less.
All too soon he’s staring into Damian’s pale green eyes, trying to figure out what to say to ease the thick tension in the air.
He knows how it is, knows how terrible it feels to watch someone descend into madness without being able to help. He’s been on both sides of fear exposure.
So he puts aside his own exhaustion, tries to quell the shaking in his arms long enough to hold them open for his little brother.
Damian attacks him with a ferocity that only Dick’s managed to pull off before, and Tim realizes quickly that he isn’t the only one trembling.
“I’m fine,” He rasps, smoothing down the boy’s hair, squeezing back as tight as he can. “I’m not hurt, Damian. Everything is fine.”
It must have shaken him, it must have been excruciating, to watch his brother in that state. Tim tries to bury the guilt under rationality. It’s not either of their faults that he was gassed.
He still feels a little guilty, especially when Damian’s breath hitches with a repressed sob.
“I’m sorry I scared you.”
“You presume too much,” Damian says, but the effect is betrayed by a wet sniffle. Tim hides his smile in the boy’s hair. “I’m just mourning the loss of your reputation, Tim. The entire league bore witness to your meltdown.”
“Yeah, I don’t care,” Tim says, though he’ll have to apologize to Kon and Clark at some point. And whoever he tried to decapitate with a bat-a-rang.
His throat is making it clear just how unagreeable it finds talking right now, but Tim isn’t willing to displace the emotional preteen in his lap to get a drink.
He means to get up, he really does. He has a report to type up, has to confront the league at some point and update them about his recovery. There’s work to be done, and Tim doesn’t want to miss Bruce’s check in.
But. Well, the sheets are a lot more comfortable with a veritable space heater dozing on top of him.
Later, he’ll blame the exhaustion for the way he falls asleep in a matter of moments.